A few months ago, before I started this blog, Adam and I bought a table. A beautiful, carved, solid walnut table with elegant turned legs with leaf-shaped scrolls and six coordinating chairs in a lovely modern looking striped green and blue velvet. I found it on Craigslist because Adam's oak pub table was just too small to host more than two people for dinner, and too high for comfortable sitting.
I measured the dining room, I measured the doorway. I double checked the table's measurements with the seller. Yup, the table was 29.5 inches high, the doorway was 30 inches wide... no problem, just turn it sideways. Except... I didn't notice that the door wasn't opening 100% of the way, that about an inch of door was still jutting past the edge of the frame when fully open, leaving only 29 inches of usable space.
It took us about a week to get the table inside, a process which included no less than three hired men (one furniture expert and two handymen), attempts to remove both the pins from the hinges and the screws holding the hinges to either the door or it's frame, and the purchase of a new drill. The drill was the final step, it was purchased by me after a professional handyman company quoted me a rate of over $200 just to come look at it. We got the door off by removing the screws from the center (locked pin) hinge on the frame side, and removing the pins from the other two hinges (whose screws were stripped by the previous owners into perfect little circles). While we were working on this problem, the table had to wait in the hallway, and we had to hope we wouldn't be fined.
Fast-forward to today's discussion of washers and dryers. After doing all that research, picking the model we liked, I went back to measure the closet. It's a little hard with the stacked washer-dryer combo already in there, but it looks like the whole closet is only 30" from the back wall to the edge of the door frame where the door hits. The washer we picked is 29 3/4 inches.
I don't think either Adam or I wants a reprise of the incident of the mis-measured door. I think we'd both like some wiggle room (literally, depending on the amount of vibrations). I found another unit that is a couple inches shallower and has almost as much capacity. I'm glad Adam isn't here to have to deal with all of this, this is really what I love and he hates - trying to get the most pleasant home possible, for not too much money, by doing lots of work figuring things out. We may not get a new washer for a while though (until Adam's blood pressure goes back down).
